Along the Razor's Edge
by Lorelei'sDream
Summary: 2007. John Constantine has returned to Los Angeles, chasing a rumour of a fallen angel on this plane. A Gate to Hell was opened in Wyoming and Dean and Sam follow a trail of demon signs into the City of Angels, reluctantly joining forces with the exorcist and psychic detective to prevent the demons finding what Lilith wants. No spoilers. No slash. Feedback always great!
1. Prologue

_**AN:**__ This story is a cross-over fictional piece from Constantine, the movie, and Supernatural, the television series. It takes place in 2007. Although some of the history of John Constantine from Hellblazer is used, John is based on the film's version of the character rather than the comic's. Each chapter alternates between John's point-of-view and Dean's. This is my first attempt at fan-fiction and I know what an ambitious project I've set for myself (!) but I do hope that you enjoy and if you have comments or reviews, it would be wonderful to hear your thoughts._

_My thanks to BlackIceWitch for the cover art for this story!_

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**Prologue**

The sunlight, filtered to a heavy, dark gold through the thick smog, barred the floor of the apartment in wide lines through the slats of the permanent blinds that covered the windows. There was a narrow gantry, running along the outer wall just under the windows and if it hadn't been for the colour of the air, John might've opened a window and stepped out onto it.

The city throbbed and pulsed and roared around him. He could feel the vibrations of the traffic, through his bare feet on the floorboards, distinct from, yet oddly in sync with the machinery on the first floor of the building. The setting sun seemed to at once relax and energise the sprawling metropolis, as if its citizens felt that no longer being able to see the poisonous muck they lived and breathed in with the encroaching darkness, they were safe from it.

He shook his head slightly and turned around. Bare walls and bare floors caught every whisper of sound, and Albinoni's melancholy Adagio in G Minor breathed and caught on every surface, less music than companion in the emptiness of the apartment.

Two years ago, that emptiness had eaten at him, crawling into the cracks and crevices of his armour, slipping through the fissures of his mind, filling his sleeping hours with nightmares and his waking hours with a burden of guilt that he hadn't been able to escape from. It hadn't been his fault, but it'd been his responsibility, the deaths that had littered Gabriel's attempts at releasing Mammon and bringing Hell to this plane.

Now, the emptiness was just emptiness. A bed. A table. Nothing much left to tug at him with memories or guilt. A place to sleep, to eat, when he remembered to buy food. A place to think.

"What did Ray have to say about the omens he'd seen?" Angela came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her hair, the loose white t-shirt half-tucked into faded old jeans and her feet bare.

He looked at her and sighed softly. Nothing was empty when she was there.

"Thunderstorms," he said, going to the loudly complaining fridge and getting out a couple of bottles of cold water. "Anomalous earth movements. Oh yeah, and the statues of the angels in the Church of All Saints down on Ventura were bleeding from the eyes."

"We didn't get that over the wire," she objected, taking a bottle and swigging a mouthful as if the lack of police notification of the presence or absence of bloody-teared statues was a personal affront.

"Maybe the cops didn't think it was criminal?"

"Still should've called it in." She looked at him critically. "You don't want to be here, do you?"

Shaking his head, he looked out the windows again. "I have to deal with it sooner or later, right?"

"But you'd prefer later?"

He smiled. "Doesn't everyone?"

"Where do you want to start, John?" she asked, sitting on the edge of the table and pulling the towel from her hair. It was longer now, he thought as he glanced back at her, watching her dry it. Longer and curlier and wilder. She looked less like a homicide detective, more like a gypsy, with it down. Or spread across the pillows and his arms.

"Midnite," he said, reluctantly. The last parting had been on good terms, at least with the priest, but the bar's policy of neutrality was sometimes ignored by some of its patrons, at least some of the time. "Alone."

"No."

"Not arguing about this, Ange," he said, walking to her. He set the bottle on the table beside her and ran his hands up along the soft denim covering her thighs. "I have a lot of enemies in this town and most of them hang out there. I can't spare the concentration to look after you."

"When was the last time you had to look after me, John?"

He looked at her expressionlessly and she finally gave in, dropping her gaze and letting out an only slightly annoyed sigh.

"Alright, this one time," she agreed.

"This one time," he repeated mockingly. "Don't you have to work tonight?"

"On call." She leaned across the table, pulling a wide-toothed comb from her bag and running it through the tangled, dark-brown curls. "Let's go home."

He supposed it was his home, now, the steel-framed and salt-enclosed house that was jammed on the side of a hill, overlooking the city to one side and the long stretch of beach and ocean on the other. Her house. His home.

Leaving the city, after he'd handed over the Spear and restrained himself from starting anything with her, he'd spent the last two years wandering around the world. A reprieve from certain death had certain side-effects. London had been the usual hive of nasties and his old contacts had been surprised to see him, some of them so surprised they'd died from it. It was a peculiar thing that people forgot after a while that a reputation was there for a reason.

He'd picked up information and some useful tools along the way, and some hints that things were not as quiet as they seemed. Whispering rumours of a high-level demon out on this plane had been hard to track down.

He watched her combing through the dark skeins, her hair almost dry when she'd finished. Angela wasn't pretty, exactly. Her features were strong and vivid in a square face that held more determination than delicacy. A wide, full-lipped mouth. Black, winged brows. Bright green eyes, lined with thick black lashes. She was … riveting, he decided critically. Arresting. Stronger than he was, in most respects, though the feminine softness was there, just very well-hidden.

"I need you."

She looked at him in surprise, her hand lifting to the side of his face. No more surprised than he was, he thought dazedly, wondering where the hell that'd come from. It was the truth, but he'd never admitted it. Till now.

He leaned close, his breath mingling with hers, lids dropping as their mouths touched and broke apart, and touched again. She could ignite him with a look, sometimes. Most of the time. But touching her was different, a vortex of physical desire and emotional need that he tried hard not to analyse.

She looked up at him, eyes wide and pupils dilated as he drew back slightly.

"Home. Now."

"Yeah."

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"_Dispatch, one-eighty-seven, 1157 Sunset, requesting backup and call the CO, over_."

The scanner crackled between every transmission and John felt Angela's back tense under his hand.

"_Roger, Kilo-Three-Four, backup on its way_."

"Another murder."

"I have to get going," Angela said, her body sliding up his as she sat up and pushed her hair back from her face, the silken friction sending threads of heat down to his groin. He pushed the feelings aside, watching her swing her legs off the bed and stand up, rolling onto his side and getting out of the bed as well.

Glancing over her shoulder at him, Angela's mouth quirked up to one side. "You can't come to the crime scene."

He shook his head, knowing all too well her feelings about civilians on murder scenes. "There's a church on Sunset, 1155. Too close for coincidence."

In the closet a dozen pairs of tailored, plain black pants hung along with a dozen clean white shirts. The soft black overcoat was definitely overkill for the LA heat but he couldn't get out of the habit of wearing it. The Pacific breeze that blew the smog back most nights made it bearable. Funny how most his business was night-time work.

"John."

Looking up as he tied the laces of his polished black shoes, he saw the frown.

"What?"

"Don't – don't do anything stupid, okay?"

It hadn't been what she'd wanted to say, feeling amusement flicker through the thought. Neither of them was great at expressing themselves, not out loud, not to the other. "I'll try not to."

"I'll see you down there," she said shortly, as irritated by her own lack of clarity as the amusement she'd clearly seen in him, he decided, watching her leave.

Getting back to his feet and straightening up, he looked at himself in the mirror. Tall, broad-shouldered and still lean from the cancer's depredations on his body, crow-black hair still kept short, the black and white ensemble made him look like a low-level wise-guy.

The face that stared back at him was undoubtedly his, narrow and pale, the high cheekbones jutting out, dark eyes watchful and a five o'clock shadow over the planes of his cheeks and jawline, but he barely recognised it. It was missing the bruising and hollows that he'd become accustomed to, back in the four-pack days.

New life. Second chance. He grimaced at his reflection. Same old shit, for the most part. Ellie had told him that the demon that had gotten out had been one of the Fallen. Azazel.

Not just a half-breed. Not even just any full-blood demon. Just a fucking archdemon with powers that made the rest of the full-bloods look like school kids.

She'd had no idea where it was, other than the continent. The half-breed succubus had been terrified, hiding it behind a façade of bluff and bluster, but he knew she wasn't hanging out in the Carpathians for fun. She was hiding, along with most of the half-breed populations of the Americas, on the first plane or boat out of the US as fast and as far as they could go.

Rumours, she'd told him, before she'd vanished. Rumours of armies and a building conflict in Hell between the archdemon and the first-made.

Good times.

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The usual complete and utter cluster-fuck, John thought, looking around the smashed and heaped piles of debris that was all that remained of the interior of the church.

He'd called Angela and she'd confirmed that the body the ME's boys had scraped off the floor of the nightclub down the street was that of Father Rory McAllister, late of the Church of St Mary's Ascension, 1155 Sunset Boulevard. Looking around, he could see clearly, in his mind's eye, where the demons had entered and chased the sixty-eight year old priest around his church, driving him out onto the street and pulling him apart in front of the horrified eyes of the patrons of the Molt Inc club.

Hennessy had been the best at this, he thought, not for the first time as he turned away from the aisle and walked back out through the front doors to the street. Sonofabitch had been able to sift through anything and find him those leads. Sonofabitch had had a severe problem with the booze and he'd known it. He never should've made him take the protective pendant off, taken it away from him. At the time, he hadn't thought – yeah, well, he hadn't thought of much other than his own dying back then.

On the street, the air was moving, the night wind picking up the trash along the gutters and blowing it through the legs of the crowd that had gathered along the fluttering yellow edges of the taped-off scene. He lifted his head as a scent stood out from the city's malodorous taint … acrid and sharp, like fried metal, it slipped between the nauseating smell of greasy food from the diner across the road and the belching diesel fumes of the city bus pulling away from the kerb … there and gone. John looked up, but there was nothing to see along the uneven battlements of the low-rise buildings that lined this section of Sunset.

They were here, though. He could feel them. Chitinous claws and rancid breath. Hiding in the crowds or the shadows between the streetlights. Watching and waiting.

The click of heels on the pavement dragged his attention back and he turned to see Angela walking toward him, her head bowed as she spoke in a low voice to someone on the phone. She lifted her gaze to him, finishing the call and pushing the phone back into her pocket.

"I got two impressions," she told him without preamble. "One from the doorway next to where – most – of the body was left, the other from a witness."

"And?"

"Evil," she said simply. "Malicious and greedy on the surface, but something else underneath that, some sense of desperation."

He looked down the street. "Mooks."

"What?"

"Grunts," he elaborated, turning back to her. "They were looking for something. The church is in pieces. Must have followed the priest here when they couldn't find whatever it was."

"I checked with Central and Rampart," she continued, looking back over her shoulder at the activity as the nightclub patrons were searched and released. "Four churches, in the last week, either desecrated or destroyed. Two of the clergy were killed, but they weren't tagged as homicides because they were killed by falling debris when the churches were hit."

"They're not," John said absently, rubbing a fingertip along his brow. "Deliberate murders, I mean. Just collateral damage. They're looking for something."

"Are you going to see Midnite now?"

"Yeah," he said, looking back at her. "How long will this take you?"

Angela let out a gusting huff of air. "Four hours, maybe five."

"I'll see in the morning then."

"Looks like."

He watched her turn away, pulling her phone out again and dialling as she ducked under the tape and said something to the flatfoot next to it.

Four churches. In the central downtown area of the city. What the hell were they after, he wondered uneasily? Turning abruptly, he retraced his steps to the '52 Thunderbird he'd inherited from an old enemy a year ago. The Triumph bike was nothing like the streamlined modern motorcycles. It was chunky and solid and heavy and uncompromisingly painted in a near-solid black. Uneconomical by other bike standards, it still beat the hell out of running a car, and he couldn't be tempted to take anyone else along on it. As usual, it started at once, and the roar made most of the crowd standing in the road look around.

Midnite's was at the other of Sunset, in the cramped and ambiguous neighbourhood between the boulevard and the freeway, crammed by an industrial chemical warehouse on one side and a chop shop on the other. There were a lot of legends surrounding the one-time witch doctor, legends of immortality and curses, of speaking to the dead and to demons and brokering deals with angels. Some of them were undoubtedly true. John knew from bitter experience that Midnite was almost impossible to kill. He'd had a gun, once, that could've done it. It, along with a number of things, had gone up in a suspicious storage fire last year before he'd left the country.

Easing the bike alongside the black-painted wall of the club, he turned off the engine and swung his leg over, walking unhurriedly to the nondescript, iron-plated door that sat flush to the alley.

"Password?" The voice inside was unfamiliar and John frowned slightly. The card the door-keeper held was clear in his mind, but not from the old set the club had used before.

"Guy with ten swords sticking out of him," he called out softly. Through the door he heard the sound of the bolts withdrawing, clunking steadily down the frame.

At the end of the hall, a set of iron steps led down to the bar and Rolando stood by the velvet cord, grinning at him as he approached.

"John, shit, man, long time."

"He in?"

"In the back, yeah." The bouncer jerked his head toward the door. "Where you been?"

"Bulgaria," John told him, walking past and into the club.

It hadn't changed. Black walls, black lights in some parts of the room, dimmed red and blue in others. Stopping by the end of the long, polished ebony bar, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the different light levels, his gaze moving curiously over the clientele.

Everyone was welcome at Midnite's, provided they followed the rules. The rules were simple. The place was completely neutral. He saw the polished, hard skin of a vampire under the black light by the stage, luminescent and glowing; at a booth along the far wall, under the old-fashioned coloured glass lampshades a group with inhumanly perfect features sat, the lamplight glittering on hair of platinum and raven-black and titian-red. They thought they blended in so well, he thought derisively but they didn't. Even to the general population, they stood out.

Vampire and werewolf and nephilim, mutants and witches and cambion, all of them were drawn here eventually, the lesser deities and the old ones and shape-shifters, familiars, faery and practitioners of a thousand types of magic and sorcery, from the purest white to the depthless black. They couldn't help it, he knew. In every incarnation, in any incarnation those with a drop of human blood couldn't help the need to be with others of their kind, or at the very least, others who knew of their kind.

"John, I thought you weren't coming back."

He turned his head, the purple-tinged ebony skin of the man beside him gleaming under the bar's silver-hued overhead lights.

"I changed my mind," he said, pivoting to lean on the bar as he studied his companion.

Papa Midnite had been a witch doctor, deep in the Congo, at some distant time in the past. He'd become a houdoun in the late eighteen-hundreds, and had settled for a while in New York city, running a profitable gun-running business and tending to his growing flock of believers. That'd fallen apart when the city had been taken over by the Italians and later the Chinese, he'd told Constantine several years before, over a couple of bottles of rare blended whiskey.

Now, he operated a wide but very discreet criminal business from the back room of the bar, listened to the patrons he'd cultivated in the name of neutrality, and collected rare and unusual objet of interest, all with a single focus on power.

"Come back," Midnite said congenially. "I just opened a case."

In a good mood, for a change, John thought, following the magically cleared path the man opened as he strolled across the crowded floor. He caught glimpses of faces, some familiar, some not. Demons and angels could not manifest in their own constructions on this plane. It was not forbidden for them to possess any meatsuit that consented, however. For an angel, consent had to be spoken, freely and willingly offered. For a demon, the consent could be subconscious, an underlying desire to be punished or ridden or tortured would serve as well as an overt 'yes'.

It'd never failed to depress him as to how many people had those underlying subconscious feelings, driven by guilt or despair, amped up by drugs and alcohol or anything that would let them escape their current misery. As if being possessed was going to help that.

The room was large, several seating areas set a comfortable distance from the table that fronted a curved leather booth, serving as the houdoun's desk. The décor was startling, antiques mixed with pop art. Around the walls, four doors, identical to the one they'd entered through, were spaced evenly.

"The Fallen was killed," Midnite said as he slid into the booth behind the table and extracted a thin, brown cigarillo from a slim gold cigarette case. He looked up at John, dark eyes sparkling with sudden amusement as he offered the case to John. John smiled back.

"How?"

"I do not have the details of that feat, my friend," the houdoun said, the flame of the lighter outlining his features in gold for a moment. "But a Gate was opened. Last week."

John stared at him disbelievingly. "Tell me you didn't just tell me that a Gate to Hell was opened."

Midnite's full lips curved up to one side. "The information I have is that between three and six hundred demons were released."

"Well …" John leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on Midnite's face. "That certainly explains the vandalised churches and the dead fucking priests, doesn't it?"

"There are more coming to this city every day." Midnite ground out the cigarillo and looked through the curling grey tendrils of smoke at him. "What happened to the Ace?"

John's mouth thinned as he looked away. "It was destroyed. Fire in my storage unit."

"Jesus, John, you have to learn to take better care of things."

"Yeah." He looked back at the houdoun. "What would demons be looking for here?"

"I don't know," Midnite said, drawing another cigarillo from the case and lighting it. "I thought you were sleeping with that psychic?"

"She's not that kind of psychic," John said, keeping his voice and face expressionless.

"A pity," Midnite said easily, tilting his head to one side. "You need a fast-track, John."

"Tell me about it," he growled, pushing back his chair. "What are the half-breeds saying?"

"You know I can't divulge a confidentiality."

"Your rules are going to fuck you and everyone on this planet one day," John snapped at him as he turned on his heel for the door.

"My rules are the only reason I hear these things at all, John," Midnite called after him. "Stay in touch."

"I'll be around."

He walked out of the room and through the club without pausing, unaware that he was clearing a path almost as effectively as Midnite had done, his brow furrowed as he tried to think of anyone else he could squeeze who might have some information.

Angela was that kind of psychic, he thought, the knowledge trapping him against his feelings. Or she would be, in time. She was … inexperienced right now, as unwilling to develop her talent as he was to ask it of her. He wondered bleakly if there was going to be a choice in that.

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	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

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Dean Winchester leaned back against the pillows heaped at the head of the bed and watched his brother as he plugged in the laptop and set it on the rickety table next to the small kitchenette of the latest cheap double on the way from Nebraska to California.

He had the feeling they were in a town called Parachute, but he wasn't certain of that and it was too much damned trouble to get off the bed to check on it. They were definitely in Colorado, that much he knew. And he was definitely too tired to watch Sam fiddle with the computer and look for more signs of the trouble they'd helped to unleash across the nation.

"Whatever's goin' on is gonna wait till morning, Sam," he said, toeing his boots off his feet and hearing the clunks as they dropped to the floor. He'd been driving for seven hours and he was done.

Rolling onto his side and closing his eyes, he tried to force out the images that flooded that quiet dark space behind his eyelids. It wasn't working, he acknowledged to himself after failing. There was too much fucking crap.

Sam. His brother had nailed him with what he'd done less than three days after he'd made the deal. And he was pissed, no doubt about that. He couldn't blame Sam for the moody anger that had flared periodically into rage. He knew he'd feel the same way if their positions had been reversed. He'd tried to explain that he hadn't had a choice in the matter.

Seeing their father again in the cemetery had been more painful than he could've believed. He was glad, so unbelievably glad that he'd gotten out. And he'd saved his life, again, he knew. But the pain of knowing what John Winchester had done for him, a pain that had been shrieking and gibbering and screaming at him ever since he'd acknowledged it in the cemetery that held his mother's grave… knowing where he'd been… what had been happening to him in the year since John had dropped to the floor of a hospital room and he'd gotten out of that hospital bed, injuries healed, no longer right next to dying… that pain was never going to leave him.

He couldn't rid himself of the memory of his brother's body, lying motionless and silent on a mattress in an abandoned house in an abandoned town, either. _What am I supposed to do?_ Well, he'd figured that one out and it might not have been the smartest thing to do, or the best planned thing to do but it'd been the only thing he could do and he'd done it. One year and then…

Opening his eyes, he looked down the length of his still fully-clothed body at his brother, Sam's face lit up by the laptop's screen as he sat hunched over the keyboard, searching. He knew exactly what he was looking for – demon signs. And a loophole. A way out for him.

_We trap the crossroads demon, trick it, try to welch our way out of the deal in any way? You die. Okay? You die. Those are the terms. There's no way out of it. If you try to find a way, so help me god, _I'm_ gonna stop you._

He told Sam straight out that there was no way out but the kid was tenacious, and he'd stopped trying to dissuade him when he'd realised that it was the only way Sam was gonna hold it together for the whole year.

Holding a rising groan behind his clenched teeth, he rolled onto his stomach, closing his eyes again and trying to get his thoughts away from what _had_ happened onto what was _gonna_ happen if they didn't get ahead of the horde that had escaped while the gate had been open.

Bobby had headed back to Sioux Falls as soon as they'd burned Isaac. Tamara had taken off for who-knew-where. Sam had dug their father's tattered file on demon signs and had been going over it with a microscope for the last three days. Thunderstorms out of season. Blight and livestock deaths. Earth movements. All naturally occurring phenomena that most people would overlook, even if they happened in places not known for it or for no apparent reason. His father hadn't overlooked them. And his brother had been searching the 'net for those things and finding them.

The trail was intermittent and haphazard, leading south of west across the mountains. His first thought had been Vegas. What demon wouldn't want to stir up that town and how much damage could a bunch of them do there where everyone was delusional and looking for the pot of gold to begin with? The question was would they even notice any signs of demon infestation there?

He wanted a drink. He wanted to be out of his head for an unspecified length of time. He needed to sleep and he couldn't do it with the constant irritation of memory and pain and guilt, scratching at him like a fucking splinter that'd gone too deep to dig out, and the tap-tap of the computer's keys, his brother looking for answers to questions that he had the feeling were never going to be answerable.

Under the bed, half-hidden by the canvas army bag that held everything he owned, there was a pint bottle of whiskey. He leaned over the edge of the bed and picked it up, unscrewing the lid and downing half the contents in a pungent, fiery series of swallows. He had another nine hours of driving tomorrow and he needed to sleep. And he wasn't going to kid himself that anything other than oblivion was gonna let him.

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The flat, white heat of the desert sun sparkled off the tawdry shine of the buildings and reamed his eyes, even behind sunglasses, as he and Sam walked down the Strip. Light spearing out from the polished metal and burning them in the reflections of the blued and silvered glass walls of the big, flash casinos and hotels that housed the dreams of millions.

He loved this town, usually, he thought in annoyance. At night, the Strip was a fairyland of lights and action, music and girls and laughter, punctuated every now and then by the screamy hysteria of a winner, and the sounds of coins roaring and rolling out of a slot that was paying off, finally. He loved the life of the town, and the sense of being someplace where dreams did come true, if not that often, and not in the way people thought they would.

In the daytime, the Strip was like an old, tired whore, all the smoke and mirrors revealed in the harsh sunshine, make-up caked and running, the sounds of traffic and construction overwhelming everything else. As a place to be with a hangover, it was near the top of his list for 'closest to Hell'.

"I don't get it," Sam said, slowing at the corner and waving the EMF in his hand slowly from one point of the compass through the others. "We're getting trace amounts, it should be off the scale."

Leaning in the thin line of shade offered by the streetlight's pole, Dean rested his head against the cool concrete and sighed.

"I think this was a stop-over, Sam, not the final destination."

"But where else are they gonna get victims easier than here?" Sam demanded, shoving the meter back in his pocket and looking around. There weren't many pedestrians on the street at this time. "This place operates at night, on greed, and fantasy –"

"Yeah, well, maybe they had other things to do," Dean offered tiredly. "It's a bust, okay? Let's go back to the motel."

Sam looked at him, and he could see the worry lines furrowing up his brow.

"I want to check out a couple of other things, alright? I'll meet you back there."

It wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Sam, we need to talk 'bout something."

Sam's worried expression morphed straight into a scowl, his gaze dropping to his feet. "Dean, we've been over this."

"Listen to me, just once, okay?" He forced himself to straighten up, using the pole for traction. "This isn't our fault, and it's not your fault."

"Funny, that's not the way I see it." Sam looked across the street, his face all hard planes and angles under the shaggy fringe. "I could've killed Jake, Dean. Twice. I had my chance and I blew it."

"You took the higher road, man," Dean said, his voice filled with frustration. "That's a good thing."

"Yeah," Sam said mockingly. "Such a good thing that you made a deal and lost your soul and Jake got the drop on Ellen and opened a goddamned gate to Hell and let out god-knows-how-many demonspawn into our world. God, yeah, Dean, that sure sounds like a good thing to me."

Tucking his chin against his chest, Dean chewed on his lip as he tried to think of an answer to his kid brother's assertions. Unfortunately, they were all true.

"Doesn't matter what happened," he said, looking back up at Sam's profile. "You didn't know how it'd pan out. No one can. You did the best you could and we've been cleaning up ever since."

For a second, a moment's stilling of time, he thought he might've gotten through. Then Sam turned to look at him and he saw the hard look in his brother's eyes.

"Go back to the room, Dean," Sam said quietly. "Get some sleep. I'll be there in a while."

He watched as Sam checked for traffic and crossed the street, heading back the Strip the other way. There was no way he could get through to him, he thought. He believed that killing Jake when Sam'd had the chance hadn't been the answer. He couldn't make Sam understand why he'd done what he'd done, or why he wasn't feeling worse about it.

He'd told Sam he was tired, and that was just the truth. He'd never felt so tired since his father had told him that he might have to kill Sam, and then had died on a hospital floor. He'd thought it'd been hard having to make the decisions when they'd been looking for their father. It was a million times worse now, every single choice he faced seemed to have hundreds of possible outcomes and he could never be sure that the one he chose was the right one.

Jim was gone. Caleb. His father. Everyone he'd needed, had leaned on and looked up to. Everyone who'd taught him the business and what to do and when and how to do it. He missed them so much that sometimes he felt like he was suffocating, silently, in a roomful of air, just suffocating without anyone to hear him.

You've got Sam, he told himself forcefully, pushing off the pole and staggering a bit as he walked back to the twenty-four hour lot where he'd left the car. And Bobby. There were other others out there who could help. They weren't entirely alone.

The thought wasn't particularly comforting and the icepick headache was getting worse as he made his way down along the baking concrete sidewalk, eyes half-closed against the glare.

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**

The bang of the motel door woke him. Opening his eyes, he was relieved to note that the glassy fragility had gone, leaving him with the sensation of being wrapped in layers and layers of cotton-wool, at a pleasant if dangerous remove from the world.

"You were right," Sam said, dropping his bag on the table and going to the fridge.

"I was?" Dean levered himself into a sitting position on the soft mattress and looked at his brother's back. A glance at his watch showed that he'd been sleeping for the last five hours. Some kind of miracle. "About what?"

"They were here, but they didn't stay," Sam said, turning around with a beer bottle in each hand and crossing the room to the bed to hand one of them over.

"Uh huh," Dean said, since Sam seemed to be expecting some kind of response.

"Police had multiple bashings, traffic incidents and attacks four nights ago, nothing since."

"Okay," Dean said warily. The tight, aggressive movements of his brother as he moved around the room seemed to require caution.

"There was a family killed, four miles out of Barstow," Sam said. He turned and dropped onto the sofa, burying his face in his hands. "Three nights ago."

Dean waited. He knew about guilt. Knew how it came out of the dark to wrap hard hands around the throat with no warning. Knew that Sam was struggling with an ocean of it now.

"Wasn't on you, Sammy."

"They'd been on holiday," Sam said, as if he hadn't heard that. "Heading home. Mom, Dad, four kids. Some kind of SUV, the cops said, one with a lot of room. Guess they had a nice life."

"Sam," Dean said, getting off the bed and going to the sofa to sit next to his brother. "Come on, this isn't on you."

"The detective, he said it took them thirty hours to find all the body parts, find 'em and figure out how many people had been in the car."

Dean was ready for it, when Sam drew in on himself, muscles contracted, his eyes screwed shut and the breathless gasp and the way his arms wrapped hard around his head, around his chest.

"Sam," he said, his voice not loud but firm as he reached around his brother, pulling him closer, gathering him in his arm. "Listen to me. It's bad, fuck I know it's bad, but this isn't your fault. None of this is your fault. This is – this is fucking hellspawn, the way they work. Those people didn't do anything wrong, they were just in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time, but it's not on you."

He could feel Sam shuddering, body twitching helplessly as his nervous system tried to process a pain that went all the way through and had no foci, no one point of entry. His hold tightened as he felt tears soaking through the arm of his shirt, heard the ragged breaths his brother was trying to get into his lungs.

"We can't help everyone, okay?" he kept going, looking over Sam's head at the wall opposite. "We'll find them, every one of them, and we'll make them wish they'd never been born and we'll send them back, alright?"

"We gotta focus, Sam, focus on finding them first."

After a while, the steel seeped out of Sam's back and shoulders and arms, his breathing got a bit easier. After a while, he could feel the uncontrollable twitches and shudders ease away, bleed out from his brother's frame. Sam's weight fell a little more heavily on him and he shifted slightly under it, squeezing the shoulder under the hand that held it.

When they'd been kids, he'd comforted his brother like this a thousand times, more probably. Feeling the anguish diminish through sheer exhaustion, feeling him soften in his arms.

"Sam."

Sam lifted his head slowly, looking out at him through red and swollen eyes.

"We won't let them get away with it, alright?"

His brother nodded disinterestedly.

"Come on, get into bed," Dean said, moving back a little and pushing Sam a bit more upright. "We get to LA tomorrow, see what's going on."

"Dean –"

"Yeah?"

"When you killed the y-yellow-eyed demon," Sam said, stumbling as he forced out the words. "The visions went. I haven't had one since then."

Dean looked at him. "Good."

Shaking his head, Sam mumbled, "What does it mean? Does it mean that – does it mean Dad was wrong?"

His breath escaping in a long exhale, Dean leaned back a bit further. "Maybe, yeah. I mean, that was the curse, right? I guess it's gone now."

Sam was still slumped over, his face hidden behind the fall of thick hair, shadowed and indistinct. He heard the harsh rasp of an indrawn breath.

"When Dad, in the graveyard, before Dad – uh – went, did he say – did you get anything from him?"

Dean closed his eyes as that memory flooded his mind again, without warning or the usual barricades he put in place to stop it from tearing him apart. He wasn't sure what his brother wanted to know. It hadn't been like talking to the man, but he'd felt something, something so tenuous he couldn't believe it, even now.

"Kind of," he said reluctantly. If it helped Sam, he'd tell him anything. He wasn't all that sure it would help his brother. "I, uh, felt like he was okay, you know. Like he was proud of us, of what we did –"

He stopped talking, unable to even articulate that properly. It'd been more than that, those few strung-out moments, feeling his father's soul reach out and touch him in a way that was impossible but also inevitable. Somehow.

He'd felt love, surrounding him and filling him. He'd felt reassurance, maybe. A sense that his father knew of his imaginings and was trying to tell him that it'd been worth it. He'd felt a glowing sensation that had spread through him like a fire and a sadness that had tinged everything else.

"I felt like he was okay with everything," he finished, aware of how inadequate that sounded.

"I felt that too," Sam admitted, lifting his face and wiping both palms over it.

"Get some sleep, Sammy," Dean said gently, getting up from the sofa.

"Yeah."

He watched him get up and walk to the bathroom, ears tracking the routine from the toilet flushing to the taps running, the splash of water, the faint sound of a zip being opened. Rubbing a hand over his jaw, he let himself drop onto the side of the bed.

Trying to give his brother comfort and reassurance was one thing, he thought tiredly. He couldn't do the same for himself. Jake had opened the tracks and the gate, he wasn't in any doubt about that. Bobby and Ellen had just about killed themselves trying to shut it while he'd been facing the yellow-eyed demon and getting thrown across the boneyard for his trouble. But they'd been there and the four of them knew how it'd really gone down.

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**

Another motel room. Dean looked around the sagging furniture and half-hearted attempt at décor tiredly. Just one time, he'd like to stay someplace that didn't look like it was a protected fucking reserve for every kind of bug known to mankind.

"Anything?" he asked Sam as he brought in the long, canvas duffle from the car, the weapons inside clunking softly against each other.

Sam was frowning at the screen. "Yeah, a few things."

"Lemme have it," Dean said, dropping the bag and pulling a beer from the paper bag on the scabrous Formica counter.

"Four churches were hit in the last two weeks, and get this, in the last one, the eyes of the statues were bleeding," Sam said, leaning closer to the screen.

"Sounds like our kind of thing," Dean agreed noncommittally, tipping the beer up and letting the quietly fizzing liquid slide down his throat.

"Three priests have been killed," Sam said, the excitement in his voice fading away as he read the details. "Two were killed in the churches when they fell on them, the last one was three days ago, killed in a nightclub next door to church."

"Killed how?"

"Doesn't say," Sam replied, staring at the screen intensely. "Lots of eye witnesses but none of them are talking to the press."

"So, likely to be bad."

"Yeah, seems like."

"Got the lead cop's name?" he asked as he finished the beer and dropped the bottle in the trash can.

"Ah, yeah, Detective Angela Dodson," Sam said, writing it down. "Down at Central."

"Who you wanna be this time?" Dean turned to the bags and pulled out the box of IDs.

"I don't think we're going to get anything unless we're FBI."

"Ah, c'mon, not the suits again," Dean complained as he looked accusingly at his duffle.

Sam shrugged. "You want to get the info, we have to do it right. It's not so easy as it was when you and Dad were hitting the podunk towns, Dean. This is LA, they're gonna check our creds."

"Fine."

"Fine," Sam agreed.

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**

"Nice digs," Dean murmured as they followed the uniform out of the elevator and into a wide, open space, filled with light from the two walls of plate-glass windows and divided into large wall-less cubicles. Along the other interior wall, several glass-fronted offices had a modicum of privacy from the rest of the office floor with half-opened venetian blinds covering them and the deputy led them down to the one closest to the exterior wall, A. Dodson stencilled on the door.

"Detective, these are the feds who called up," the uniform said, sticking his head into the office as he pushed the door wide. Detective Dodson was on a mobile phone, standing behind her desk on one leg as she half-crouched to push a shoe onto the foot of the other.

"Frank, I don't care what Rampart tells you, I need those files and I need them today, am I understood?" she barked at the person on the other end of the line, her gaze flicking up at them and dropping to the screen of her computer.

Not all that tall, Dean thought, his eyes wandering automatically from the no-nonsense black heeled pumps, skating over tapered and tailored black pants to the creamy silk shirt that was sticking here and there to the detective's skin with the heat. A jacket that matched the pants was half-hung over the back of her chair. He glanced around the office, noting the mounds of files that teetered over every horizontal surface, the piles of notes and reports that covered most of the desk. His attention focussed on a small framed photograph of the detective, sitting in a garden and smiling unselfconsciously at the camera, and next to it, a plain silver cross pendant, the chain draped over the frame of the photograph.

Looking back at her, he tried to see the religious side to the woman in front of him. Her hair was thick and dark, not quite red, but not brown either. Something in between and drawn back from her face in a severe knot at the crown of her head. Dark, winged brows swept over green eyes, a short nose and a small, but full-lipped mouth, that had long ago lost its lipstick, softened the uncompromising square jaw. Tough cookie, he decided, abandoning his original, friendly plan for a business-like nod of the head when she hung up on her caller.

"Hands full?" he asked, pulling out the leather identification wallet that Sam had insisted they'd need to pull off federal agents believably. He flipped it open and watched as she walked around the desk to take a closer look.

"It's LA," she said coolly to him, her gaze lifting from his badge to his face. "How can I help the FBI?"

"You had a murder, three days ago," Sam said, putting his ID back into his jacket pocket and glancing at the covered desk. "A priest."

"Yeah," she allowed, folding her arms over her chest as she leaned on the edge of the desk. "And that's federal jurisdiction – how, exactly?"

"We're sitting on two deaths, in Nevada and Nebraska," Dean interjected. "Both clergy, different denominations."

"I guess there are some folks who just don't like religion," she remarked, waiting.

"Very true," Dean said, forcing himself to smile. "My grandma's one of them, but crossing state lines puts any similar deaths into our territory –"

"Detective, we don't want to tread on your toes here," Sam cut in smoothly, pushing his hair back from his forehead. "We'd just like to see the body and see if your killer is the same as ours."

"Aren't you a little young for an agent, Agent?" she asked him, eyes narrowing slightly.

Dean tucked his chin against his chest, hiding his amusement. Sam drew himself up and stared back at her.

"Graduated early," he said stiffly.

For a long drawn-out moment, she studied them, then she straightened up from the desk and shrugged. "Body of the latest vic is down at County, in the Coroner's office. I'll call down, let them know you're on the way."

"Thank you," Sam said.

"Yeah, thanks," Dean added, glancing back at the picture. "You seem a little religious yourself?"

She followed his gaze to the photograph and turned back to him, her face still and expressionless. "That was my sister," she said shortly. "She died."

"Sorry to hear that," Dean said, turning to leave.

Walking after his brother along the outer wall of the office and back to the elevators, he found himself wondering how long ago she'd lost her sister, and why he could sense a level of guilt in her about it.

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**

The coroner's office at the county hospital was painted a dull, avocado green. The tiles that lined the lower half of the wall were a shade or two lighter, but no less dull, and the grey speckled vinyl that covered the floor completed the ensemble look, Dean thought as they walked along the corridors, looking for the right door. If you weren't already dead in here, you'd be thinking of getting that way in these depressive, lacklustre surroundings.

"Here," Sam said, gesturing ahead to a small, discreet sign that protruded from the edge of a doorway, next to a wide, glass viewing window. "Uh, Dr Rendle did the post."

The door swung open as Dean reached for the handle, and he found himself standing a foot from an attractive blonde not too many inches from his own eyeline. A swift glance at her chest showed a black and white plastic name tag, the name Rendle prominently displayed.

"Dr Rendle? Just looking for you," he said, his mouth quirking up to one side slowly.

"Were you?" One brow lifted at him, and he saw a spark of interest in the pale grey eyes. "And you are?"

"FBI, Doctor," Sam cut in, pulling out his ID and flipping it open. "Special Agents Plant and Page."

She laughed as she looked at them. "Like Zeppelin, how cool."

"Uh, um… yeah," Sam responded uncomfortably, shooting a daggered look at his brother. "You did the autopsy on Father McAllister?"

"Well, I don't know that you could cal it an autopsy," she said, her nose wrinkling up with a delicate disgust. "I put the pieces together, made sure it was the right body. Cause of death was not in dispute."

"What was the cause of death?" Dean asked, leaning against the doorway.

"Ripped into small pieces and scattered across a nightclub floor," she said bluntly. "Blood loss was the primary reason he died."

"Can we see the remains?" Sam asked, putting his notebook back in his pocket.

"Remains? There are no 'remains'," she told him with a frown. "Just a bunch of Tupperware containers for the pieces large enough, and a trash bag for the rest."

"Have you completed your report?" Dean looked at her.

"No. It'll be finished by morning." She glanced back Sam briefly then returned her gaze to Dean. "You can look at it then."

"Uh," Dean said, straightening up. "Maybe you've got some notes I could see before then?"

"I guess that would be okay," she said slowly. "It'll cost you though."

Sam sighed loudly and Dean smiled. "Free for dinner?"

"I've got a graveyard shift at the hospital at midnight," she said, resettling her purse over her shoulder. "Think we can get through business by then?"

"No problem," he told her, turning and offering her his arm as she stepped through the door and pulled it hard, the lock clicking. "Ah, Agent Page, I'll catch up with you later."

He could feel his brother's disapproving stare following him down the hall. But what the hell, it was his last year, and there weren't many perks that came with the job. He had to take them where he found them. Sam'd be alright.

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

"What's wrong with this picture?" John said, his voice flat as he stepped back from the table and looked at the large map of the city spread over the surface.

Angela moved to stand beside him, her eyes narrowing slightly as she tried to see a pattern in the red dots that stood out from the buildings and streets. "The dates?"

"Right."

She glanced at him and picked up the red marker, walking around the edge of the table. "First church hit?"

"Temple Akiba, Sepulveda Boulevard. Hmm, no denomination issues," John said, picking up the file. "The second was Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mercury Avenue, Montecito."

Angela drew a straight, thick line in red from the first mark to the second.

"Southern Missionary Baptist, South Main, Watts," John continued and Angela drew the line from Montecito down to Watts. "Fourth, two nights ago. Church of St Mary's Ascension, Sunset, West Hollywood."

He looked at the map as she drew the line and took the pen, completing the shape that was now obvious to both of them. "Tonight. Southland Christian Church, corner of Randolph and King, in Bell."

The Pacific blazed gold through the wide picture windows that looked down the hillside to the ocean.

"Not even demons would be this obvious, surely?" Angela stared at the five-pointed star, inverted, that she'd drawn on the map. "I mean, it's borderline cheese."

"Even demons have to obey rules." John looked over at her. "As cheesy as they are."

"I'll call the precinct," Angela said, straightening up as she capped the pen and set it on the table."

John stared at the map. The cops wouldn't be able to do anything or see anything, he thought distractedly. But perhaps they could keep the neighbours out of it.

"We need to go. Now."

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**

Angela's massive black four-wheel drive moved along the hot, clogged streets spasmodically, even with the cherry sitting on top, its whirling light clearly visible in the growing dusk.

"Should've taken the bike," John muttered, glaring at the car ahead of them who was refusing to pull over and get out of their way.

"What are the demons looking for?" Angela asked, privately agreeing with him on the matter of transportation but unable to do so out loud. He was right about too many things.

"I don't know," John said, leaning back and half-closing his eyes. It was a question that was making him more and more uneasy. "There are thousands of churches in this city, why just these? Why not the cathedrals? The temples? The airport for the Hari Krishnas?"

"What about the priests – or rabbis, or whoever runs the churches?"

He nodded slowly. It was a possibility. He knew of McAllister because the priest had performed two exorcisms. Over twenty years ago now, but still, that level of knowledge in the general Church was rare. And the rabbi at the temple, his reputation was kept within the faith of the congregation but Shapiro had been involved in at least two casting out ceremonies that he'd heard of.

"Yeah, maybe," he allowed. If the priests were being targeted, because of their knowledge, their skills or experience, it would narrow any other possible targets in the city. "You still got that running file on crazy in the station?"

Angela nodded. She'd opened the file and spread the word discreetly through the system that she was looking for the oddball cases. There were about ten open cases in it now.

"What are you looking for?"

"Servants of God with some personal experience of the occult," John answered absently, still thinking over the people he knew – had known – in the city who might fit the bill.

Getting off the Long Beach freeway at Slauson, Angela let out a long exhale and slowed, pulling the flashing light from the roof. There was no point to scaring anyone. The streetlights glowed in rainbowed haloes in the salt-heavy air, the sea breeze from the ocean having finally started cooling down the city and pushing the smog back toward the mountains, and she hit the washer button as the crystals formed on the windshield, crazing the light into a diamante blaze before the fresh water, liquid detergent and heavy rubber blades removed it.

She turned left onto King and crossed the railway, doing a u-turn on the empty street to park in front of the substantial church.

"What'd we get on the priest here?" John asked as he got out of the car.

"Priests," Angela said, reaching back in to grab her bag. "Father Sean Tindell, Father Alphonse Romano, Father Michael Gutierrez. Father Romano and Father Gutierrez are in their early sixties, apparently, served here for more twenty years each. Father Tindell's a spring chicken, only forty-six and moved to the diocese two years ago, from Rome."

They walked together to the church steps, both relaxing slightly as they passed from the cool, humid air of the street into the darkened vestibule, the thick stone walls cutting sound and humidity from the interior of the church.

Angela stopped by the font, dipping her fingertips in and crossing herself automatically. John gave her a quizzical look.

"Even now?"

"More so than ever," she said lightly. "Before it was just habit. Now it's faith."

"Now you know for sure," he corrected her dryly, thinking of Gabriel's words to him in another church.

She lifted a brow at him and shrugged, walking down the long aisle, booted feet soundless on the thick carpet runner.

At the altar, the priest looked up from the podium, smiling at them as they approached.

"May I help you?"

"Father Tindell?" Angela asked, pulling her badge from her jacket pocket. "We'd like to ask you some questions."

"Is there something wrong?" the priest asked, closing the file in front of him and walking around the podium. He looked from Angela to John as neither answered.

"There might be some –" Angela started to say, glancing at John.

"We're pretty sure your church will be attacked by demons tonight," John said bluntly.

For a moment, the priest said nothing, then he smiled broadly. "Demons? It isn't Halloween yet."

"Father Tindell, my, um, colleague here –"

John took a step closer to the priest, his gaze slipping over the simple black suit and returning to the man's face. "You know what I'm talking about," he said, looking back down at the priest's hand. "That ring has been wrought as a protective device for more than a thousand years, Father, and –" He leaned forward slightly, nostrils flaring. "You're wearing a scent, crushed hawthorn and rowan, isn't it? Another protection against notice of the hellspawn?"

"I don't know what –" The priest turned to look at Angela. "This is preposterous, I've –"

"Four churches were attacked in the last two weeks, Father," John cut him off again, his tone harsh and impatient. "Two of them were Catholic, one a Jewish synagogue, the fourth was a Baptist church." He pulled out a small notebook from his pocket. "You might've known the men who were killed – Father Rory McCallister, Rabbi Avrom Shapiro, Pastor Nicholas McClure, Father Iain Tennyson?"

He watched the priest's expression change, the bluster of pretence falling away as the man's eyes widened fractionally.

"I don't believe I caught your name, sir," Father Tindell said sharply.

"John Constantine."

"The exorcist." Father Tindell looked at him coolly. "Among other things."

"That's just the job description," John said, mouth quirking up to one side. "What are you keeping here?"

"Nothing," the priest said, looking from John to Angela.

"Is the church protected?" John asked abruptly, looking around.

"As much as I could without arousing suspicion," Father Tindell admitted, his reluctance obvious. "Iron and salt lines, where I could be discreet."

Shaking his head slightly, John sighed. All three turned at the sound of the outer door opening, and footsteps crossing the vestibule.

"Expecting company?" John asked the priest softly, as two men walked into the church, slowing as they saw the group at the altar.

"Oh god," Angela said, her voice holding an edge of frustration.

"You know them?" John looked at her.

"Feds," she told him hurriedly. "They were looking at Father McAllister's death a couple of days ago. I'll get rid of them," she added, looking pointedly at the priest.

John turned slightly, watching her walk down the aisle, his gaze moving past her to the men she was approaching. Both tall, one maybe three or four inches taller than the other. Their suits were cheap, synthetic, shirts so crisp they had to be new. The taller had long hair, flopping down over his forehead. He didn't think the cut would fly in a government job. The other's suit was straining across wide shoulders, one finger under the collar of the shirt, tugging at it slightly. Either the man had bought the wrong size or he wasn't used to wearing it, John thought.

"Whatever it is you're keeping here, the demons will be able to find it," he said quietly to the priest, turning back to him as Angela stopped the men. "You thought you'd stay safe by moving it around, but those buildings were razed, and this one will be the same."

"I can't –" Father Tindell shook his head. "There's nowhere else, Mr Constantine."

"There is," John said, glancing over his shoulder as the two men came up to the altar. "We can protect you and what you're guarding –"

"Father Tindell?" The man in the dark charcoal suit asked, looking incuriously at John for a moment, then back to the priest. "Special Agent Plant, FBI. This is my partner, Special Agent Page. We'd like to ask you a few questions."

John looked past them to Angela, who made a face at him and rolled her eyes. Plant and Page? He looked at the taller man, the severity of his suit softened by the warm navy of the fabric. Young face. Old eyes. Both men had wide frames. Both had square, cleft chins. The similarities were small but genetically telling.

"Uh, gentlemen, I have a matter of spirituality to conclude first, if you wouldn't mind waiting… ?" The priest said tactfully, gesturing to the empty pews to the side of the altar.

"Certainly, Father," Page said, subtly shouldering his partner as he turned. "Whenever you're ready."

Plant's eyes flashed in annoyance, but he turned as well, taking the step down.

Thunder rumbled, somewhere close by and the lights of the church flickered. In the depths of the building, there was a loud crash.

"No."

John swung around as Father Tindell ran for the door at the side of the altar, hand just slipping over the priest's coat. On the steps, the two agents swung around as well, Plant sizing up the situation and accelerating to cut the priest off and Page glancing back at Angela and John.

"Wait, godammit –!" Plant yelled.

The door burst open, a girl flying through, and John got a strobed impression of blood and white skin and jet-black hair before she cannoned into the priest, knocking them both to the ground. He ran for them, hearing the slap of footsteps behind him.

Agent Plant was closer and he reached the priest and girl a couple of seconds ahead of John, thrown backwards suddenly as the girl scrambled to her feet and then floated off them, her head thrown back, mouth open in a long scream as she was lifted higher, her body rotating lazily until she hung several feet above the ground in front of the tall stained windows behind the altar.

John saw his impression of blood hadn't been mistaken. From her brow, from her wrists and tops of her bare feet, blood ran out in trickles and rivulets, dripping to the floor below, her clothes stained with it, vividly red in the lights over the altar.

"_Ego sum Alpha et Omega, Principium et Finis, Primus et Ultimus_."

The words came from the girl's mouth, but the voice was deep, guttural and raw. John dropped to his knees beside Father Tindell, Agent Plant glancing up at him as they took the priest's arms and helped him to his feet.

"_Beati qui lavant stolas suas ut sit potestas eorum in ligno vitae et portis intrent in civitatem_," the girl cried out, her voice cracking and rasping as it got louder. "_Foris canes et venefici et inpudici et homicidae et idolis servientes et omnis qui amat et facit mendacium!_"

"Revelations," Agent Page said, Angela walking beside him as they reached the priest and the two men holding him.

"A warning," John agreed. "Father Tindell, what is she?"

The priest stared up at the girl, his eyes filled. "A conduit. She is not evil. Just a mouthpiece."

"_Et venerunt. Sunt hic!_"

Her eyes flew open, head tilting forward to stare at the doors of the church as they boomed with a fusillade of blows from the outside.

"Sam, the font!" Agent Plant shouted as he tossed an empty glass bottle at his partner.

Father Tindell pulled free of the men's grip and ran to the girl as she began to drop lower, catching her when her feet touched the floor. "No," he called loudly to the agent. "There's – we need to get to the crypt!"

John nodded, looking at Angela. "Help him get her down there, we'll cover," he ordered, drawing a long-barrelled tube from the inside of his coat, seeing the agents pulling out guns and flasks. "Those won't help much."

"You'd be surprised," Agent Plant told him grimly, checking the magazine and slamming it home.

The building was shaking, plaster and light fittings crashing down to the floor as the pounding moved to the walls and the windows blackened from the outside.

"Sammy, get a trap down, wherever they hole up," Plant said tensely, moving to stand next to John as Sam ran through the open doorway and disappeared.

"Trap?" John asked curiously, flicking a sideways glance at the other man.

"Demon trap," the agent told him, his gaze fixed on the doors.

"Kind of esoteric for the FBI, isn't it?"

Plant glanced at him, mouth twisting slightly. "Who the hell are you?"

"John Constantine," John said. There was no recognition in the other man's face at the name and he wondered who the hell he was, not an agent and knowing about traps for demons.

That was all the time they had for thought as the church doors were smashed open, and a huge black cloud billowed and swirled and poured into the church. John lifted the tube as it approached them, hitting the firing button and sending a sweeping sheet of pale flame into the cloud, screams filling the cavernous space as the smoke crumbled and charred, flaking and falling like black snow over the aisle and pews and the steps of the altar.

"Sonofabitch!" Plant said. "What the fuck is that?"

"Dragon's breath," John said, swinging the tube around to incinerate another portion of the black cloud, backing up as he did it. Both of them saw the movement in the aisle through the murky chaos of the spiralling cloud at the same time.

"Reinforcements," Plant said sourly, levelling his weapon and firing steadily at the possessed humans who were running toward them.

"Back up," John agreed, glancing over his shoulder at the door behind them. "I can take down more in a smaller space."

At the doorway, they turned and ran along the long, narrow corridor, seeing the steps at the end leading down the crypt. Halfway down the steps, Sam's body was sprawled, limp and unconscious. John heard Plant swearing as he ran to him, turning at the top of the stairs as the cloud and possessed pressed into the hall after them.

In the confines of the hall, the dragon's breath blast filled the space from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, and the entire centre of the cloud was red and glowing when the flame finally ran out. How many fucking demons were here, he wondered remotely as he pulled out a half-dozen matchboxes from his coat pocket, shook them violently and tossed them onto the floor. The screech beetles screeched and the cloud and humans flinched back, some of the possessed falling to their knees with their hands pressed over their ears at the high, pervasive noise.

It would buy them a little time, he thought, turning for the stair, coat tail swinging out. Plant had gotten his partner over his shoulder and was staggering slowly down the stairs and John followed on his heels.

In the first chamber of the deeply dug, stone-walled crypt, Angela was lying against one wall, her hand pressed over a still-bleeding cut. Father Tindell stood in front of the girl, whose face was twisted into a mask of fury, as she paced around and around the circle drawn on the smooth, flagged floor.

John walked to Angela, kneeling and lifting her hand away from the cut to look at it. It was long but shallow and he felt relief fill him. "You alright?"

She nodded. "One must have gotten in somewhere at the back. Knocked down the agent on the stairs and jumped straight into the girl, screaming like a banshee. Father Tindell led it into the trap," she told him, waving a hand at the circle on the floor. "What's going on up there?"

"Nothing you want to know about," he said. "We need some help."

Plant was standing next to the priest. "Exorcise it?" he asked.

"The rest of the horde first," John said, walking over to them. "If she's a conduit, they can keep jumping in." He looked at Father Tindell. "You said you had something?"

The priest turned for the inner doors and disappeared. There was a clanking of pipes and then the sprinklers came on, and both Plant and John stared at the girl as her skin began to steam and blacken.

"Holy water?" Plant asked as the priest came back out, his iron-dark hair already plastered over his head.

"The bishop will kill me, but it can't be helped," Tindell said, looking at the stairs as screams and shouts of rage bounced from the stone walls. He looked at John. "Can you save her?"

Pushing a hand through his rapidly dampening hair, John nodded. He pulled out the keys and moved to the wall light, holding each filigreed disc in front of it, the shadow of the key stark against the girl's white face. The third one had an effect, the girl twisting away and roaring in anger.

He'd rather have done with a mirror, he thought, stepping across the line of the circle and grabbing the girl, the priest and Plant following him and holding her tightly as he pushed the key against her forehead and the flesh there burned and smoked under the design and metal. But you couldn't have everything and he had no way of getting rid of the mirror in here anyway. He had four crystals, all clear and all without a flaw. That would do for now.

The girl fell limp between the men's hands and John pulled the small silk bag from his pocket, tipping out the bevelled quartz stones and selecting one. He shoved the rest back in the pocket as the girl's eyes began to open again, and jammed his thumb against her jaw muscle, forcing her mouth open. The crystal only needed to be in her body. Under more relaxed circumstances, he'd have made an incision but there wasn't time for that here and when the cool, hard edges touched her tongue, her eyes flew open, the entirety of her eyeballs black across the socket.

"_Regna terrae, cantate Deo, psallite Domino qui fertis super caelum caeli ad Orientem. Ecce dabit voci Suae vocem virtutis, tribuite virtutem Deo."  
_

The girl twisted and writhed against the grip of the men holding her, blood spilling from her eyes, from her wrists, and forehead, from the holes in the tops of her feet, slicking the stone. Holding her jaw clamped shut, John continued, trying to time his movements with hers.

"_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica. Ergo draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te. cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare._"

Her voice thickened as she swore and cursed at them, flinging herself from side to side, letting herself drop and shooting upward, her strength ebbing as the ritual began to set its hooks into the flesh, to hold the soul and cast out the demon.

"_Vade, Satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis. Humiliare sub potenti manu dei, contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt."_

Abruptly, she stopped moving, hanging between Plant and the priest bonelessly for a few seconds. Then she lifted her head and looked at Father Tindell.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," she said through clenched teeth, and John's grip. "You _fucked_ me and now I'm having a _baby_! Whatever are we gonna do?"

John glimpsed the whitening of the priest's face and ignored it, raising his voice and tightening his grip on the girl's jaw. "_Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine. Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias –"_

"Died for you, didn't he?" she forced the words out past his hand as her eyes rolled to stare at Plant. "Gave up his soul for you, so little Dean would live, while Daddy's down there in the pit –"

"Shut up, bitch," Plant snapped, his fingers driving into the girl's shoulder and ribs.

_"Libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos. Ut inimicos sanctae Ecclesiae humiliare digneris, te rogamus, audi nos –"_

"What about you, Johnny?" she said, looking at him with flat black eyes. "Wanna know how Chas is going? Not in Heaven anymore, oh no!"

_"Ut inimicos sanctae Ecclesiae te rogamus, audi nos," _John said, narrowing his concentration down to the girl's mouth, to holding it shut, to completing the ritual._ "Terribilis Deus de sanctuario suo. Deus Israhel ipse truderit virtutem et fortitudinem plebi Suae."_

She screamed, arching up and back, heels drumming into the air.

_"Benedictus Deus. Gloria Patri." _John made the cross over her.

The girl shuddered and fell, Plant and the priest lowering her to the floor as John released his grip and opened her mouth, removing the crystal. The clarity was gone, the quartz now a dark grey, smoky and quiescent. He pulled the bag from his pocket and dropped it in with the others, tucking the bag and the keys away as he knelt beside her and checked her pulse.

"What happened?" Angela asked from the other side of the room, tilting her head in a listening gesture as she knelt beside Agent Page.

John turned around, registering the silence at the same time. He glanced at Plant, who nodded once, and moved out of the trap and across the room to the stairs, a thick, chunky serrated blade in his hand.

The burns and scald marks had disappeared from the girl's skin but the puncture wounds, in her wrists and feet and along her brow remained. He looked at the priest.

"Stigmatic?"

Father Tindell nodded. "Since she was thirteen. She is not devout, not even a believer. Family curse, she told me. Her mother died from her wounds when she was a baby."

"Psychometric as well?"

Sometimes, although the Church had never admitted it, the wounds of the stigmata appeared on a certain type of psychic, those whose gift manifested through touch. They were exceedingly rare and difficult to find, since they lived their lives primarily as shut-ins, shunning the world and the press of population.

"No," the priest said. "At least, not in the normal way. She only gets impressions if something's possessing her or if it's coming through her… unique gift."

John nodded. Conduits were even more uncommon than psychometrics, he thought tiredly. The myths he'd heard about them had come from a half-breed, years ago. Open channels, she'd called them. Those who lived entirely without any boundary to self and could be used by anything. Looking down at her, he wondered if she were sane.

"She got a name?"

"Hallie Caldwell." He turned as the agent came back into the crypt, tucking the knife back into the sheath under his coat.

"Gone." The agent stopped by his partner and dropped to one knee. "All of 'em." He looked over at the priest. "Church is a mess."

"That was to be expected," Father Tindell said, his tone dry.

"What were they looking for, padre?" Agent Plant asked.

"Her," the priest sadly, looking down at the girl on the floor beside him. "We believe… I believe that they think she will lead them to one of the Seals to Lucifer's cage."

The silence that filled the crypt was leaden and the priest lifted his gaze, the corner of his mouth tugging out slightly as he took in the uniformly disbelieving expressions aimed at him.

"We must go," he said. "There is a man who can protect her far more thoroughly than I can. I can only hope I can persuade him now to do so."

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**

John walked beside Angela, the girl in his arms. Ahead of them, Father Tindell pushed open a rusting gate set into a chainlink security fence that blocked the defunct entrance to the old subway station. The agents who were definitely not agents, walked behind him, Sam leaning on his partner's shoulder, half-supported.

"None of this seems to surprise you, John," Angela said in a low voice, looking down at the girl's slack face.

"Yeah," John allowed, shifting the weight of the girl in his arms as he looked across at Angela. "You remember when I told you about the bet between God and the Devil?"

"Yes," she drew out the word slowly. "No direct action, you said. Influence only."

He nodded. "That all changed when Gabriel decided to reform humanity," he said. "Those soldier demons, the ones who tried to come through possessions – something big happened. No idea what," he forestalled her next question. "But people like this girl, they're usually the first casualties when the rule-makers change the rules."

"What are we talking about?"

"I don't know," he said quietly. "Demons don't plan, Ange, they don't have the capacity for it. Midnite said that one of the fallen got out, but he was killed."

"And a gate was opened in Wyoming," she said, nodding. "What's that got to do with the bet?"

"If the Devil won, he got to get out of his cage." John heard her sharply indrawn breath. "And God had to give him a thousand years to play."

"What?!"

"That's the legend," John said, his tone filled with resignation.

The priest had a key to the padlock that chained the corroded metal gates to the entrance of the subway and the clanking of the dropped metal was loud in the quiet night. Father Tindell pushed open the gate and stood aside as the agents started down the steps into a wall of blackness.

"Who're we meeting, Father?" John said as he stepped cautiously past the priest, feeling his footing through the rubble that was scattered through the gateway. Angela pulled a flashlight from her bag and flicked it on. Another flashlight beam lit up the way further down as the agents waited for them.

"His name is Thomas Rookwood," Tindell said, pulling the gate closed and chaining it again behind them. "He was excommunicated by Rome in '95 for heretical teachings."

"Quite a recommendation," John said, his half-smile lit up by the reflected beam of the flashlight on the floor at his feet.

"He worked for the Vatican for twenty-five years, Mr Constantine," Tindell told him, turning and gesturing down the stairs. "He was their primary occult investigator."

The stairs ended in a low-ceilinged tunnel, the platform raised above the old rail lines to either side of it. Father Tindell gestured to the left and they walked along the edge and down a narrow access stair to the line itself. The steel rail was still bolted to the tunnel floor, and John moved carefully along it, unwilling to take a fall with the girl still in his arms.

"How much further?" he asked Tindell as the priest moved out ahead of the two agents.

"A hundred yards," Tindell called softly back, his voice echoing against the hard, curved walls. "Around the first bend."

John slowed as they came around the gentle arc of the line. Ahead, the tunnel had been blocked completely and sealed. In the centre of massed and concreted rock and brick was an iron door, the raised designs thrown into shadowed relief by the beams of their flashlights.

"What the hell –?" Plant said softly, his voice echoing in whispers around them.

"Thomas takes his security very seriously," the priest said apologetically. He turned and looked up and John turned his head to follow the priest's gaze. Almost hidden by the groined arch supporting the roof of the tunnel, he saw the small, blinking red light. The clanking of bolts and locks being undone or withdrawn reverberated through the metal of the door and he felt Angela move closer as the door creaked open, revealing a lighter room behind it.

"Who are they, Sean?" The deep baritone belonged to a tall man, long black going to grey drawn back from his face and tied at the nape of his neck, a full greying beard covering most of his lower face and jaw.

"This is John Constantine," Father Tindell said clearly, stepping forward and to one side as John walked to the door. "And his companion. These gentlemen are –"

"Uh –" Plant glanced at his partner. Sam shook his head, holding his ribs as he straightened up a little.

"Winchester," he said. "I'm Sam. This is my brother, Dean."

John felt a prickle of recognition at the name, beyond the usual connotation. He'd met a hunter years ago by the same name. With the same cleft chin and broad shoulders. And now that he thought of it, the same dark green eyes as the agent formerly known as Plant.

"Winchester," Rookwood repeated, looking at both men carefully. John thought he recognised the name as well. He turned to look at John and Angela. "And Constantine… and friend. Come through."

Stepping in past him, John looked around. Everywhere candles burned, wax dripping in long stalactites from the ledges and crevices, the flames flickering slightly in the draught from the open door. The tunnel dipped, heading downward and curving out of sight and he stepped over an iron barrier carefully, glancing over his shoulder to see Angela moving behind him.

"That girl," he heard Rookwood say. "She's the one?"

"Yes, they came for her tonight," Tindell replied heavily.

"I told you to bring her here, Sean," the ex-priest said irritably. "You could've prevented some deaths."

"They went to every place they could smell her," John slowed and turned, looking back at them. "There won't be stone standing of the church by morning."

As the tunnel flattened out again, they walked into a much larger area. Another platform, John thought. Here, he could discern the soft, distant hum of a generator, and electric lights, strung on wires along the ceiling, lit the cavern evenly. Angela turned off her flashlight as Rookwood lengthened his stride and gestured toward a bed on one side of the room.

"Put her there."

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

What the fuck, Dean thought, looking around as he followed his brother and the ex-priest into the massive chamber.

In the four corners, the tunnels had been sealed, but only the way they'd come in had been provided with a door. On the tunnel floors, the tracks and electrical connections were gone, the chamber divided into three areas by height, narrow access stairs joining them. The long narrow area they entered held a workshop of some kind, he thought, gaze skating over benches holding vices, rough-built shelving holding tools and boxes of miscellaneous parts he couldn't identify in the dim light between the strung out bulbs. He caught sight of an anvil, a monstrous thing of iron, looking archaic even in these surroundings and several grinding wheels, of different sizes. At the far end, a rack of some kind of metal implements gleamed in the semi-darkness but the fleeting impression he got provided no details.

On the raised platform section in the middle, the area had been divided into three distinct uses; a library, of a kind, a space for eating and cooking and another for sleeping and study. Books, of all ages and all descriptions, covered the shelves and tables, were stacked in random piles on the floor. A double bed, half-covered by rumple linen was divided from the rest of the living space by a makeshift wall of free-standing bookshelves, back to back and held together with braces. A long counter took up a part of the far wall, with a big table in front of it. Set into the counter, a stove and sink, at the end of it, an old refrigerator grumbled to itself.

Looking around, Dean stepped out of the way as John weaved his way through the furniture and books and set the girl down on the bed, his cop girlfriend following him. The dude had been handy in the fight, he had to admit, watching them discreetly as Rookwood and the priest stopped at the end of the bed. Had known what he was doing, both with the outlandish weapon he carried and with the exorcism ritual, which had used the familiar words of the Roman Catholic ritual, but had differed in the execution. He wanted to get a closer look at the set of keys the man carried.

"Pretty full on," Sam said in a low voice to him.

"Yeah," Dean agreed, turning his attention back to his brother. "What happened down in the crypt?"

"Tindell was drawing out the trap and the girl was unconscious when something came in through a vent," Sam said, rubbing his shoulder with the memory. "It hit the cop and just about threw me down the stairs and it got into the girl before the priest could do anything about it."

Gesturing to Sam to pull down the neck of his shirt, Dean looked at the reddened area of the shoulder. "This just bruising?"

"Yeah," Sam confirmed. "I hit the back of my head on the steps, and that was it."

"Lucky your head's so hard."

"Hilarious," Sam said distractedly. "Who are these people?"

"Got me," Dean said, walking between the shelving to the table next to the kitchen. "They knew our name."

It wasn't a question and Sam nodded. "Dad never mentioned anything about this? In the journal?"

Pulling out the leather book from his jacket pocket, Dean sat in one of the chairs surrounding the table and opened it up. He'd been through the damned book hundreds of times since their father had disappeared and he was sure there was nothing in it about a John Constantine or an ex-communicate priest called Rookwood, or even what a conduit was. He looked anyway, skimming through what he'd studied before, slowing down as he checked every notation in the margins.

"So, the Winchesters."

He looked up, seeing Sam's head rise as well as Rookwood walked to the table and sat down in the chair opposite, Father Tindell remaining at the side of the bed.

"I've heard of your father," the heretic said. "He has quite a reputation."

"Like Mr Constantine, over there?" Sam asked cautiously. "We haven't heard of him."

Rookwood glanced back over his shoulder and smiled. "Mr Constantine is not precisely a hunter, although much of what he did and still does, I suppose, falls into that category." He looked from Sam to Dean. "Do you know where your father is? I would like to speak to him."

"He's dead," Dean said shortly. "So that's not an option."

Rookwood's eyes narrowed as he looked at the young man. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "And surprised."

"Anyone can die in this life."

"True. Unfortunately," he agreed, looking around as John and Angela moved across the platform toward them.

"What happened here? In the city?" Sam asked, his gaze lifting as the exorcist and detective joined them.

"Well," John said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "Apparently, a Gate was opened, fairly recently in Wyoming."

Dean's mouth thinned out as he felt the twitch of his brother's gaze hitting him. "We followed a demon trail here," he told them. "It was a beeline," he added, keeping his eyes on John's face. "They didn't even stay in Vegas for long."

"We heard that one of the fallen got out, was messing around with things then got itself killed," John continued, his tone conversational. "Know anything about that?"

One of the fallen, Dean thought. Was that what the yellow-eyed sonofabitch had been? A fallen angel?

"There was a demon," Sam said unsteadily from beside him and Dean's head whipped around to glare at his brother.

"Sam –"

"No," Sam said, his jaw tightening as he shook his head. "This is too big for just us, Dean. We need help, and maybe we can get it if we're all on the same page."

Rookwood got up from the table and walked to the cupboards over the counter, opening one and pulling out a bottle of whiskey and glasses. He set the glasses down on the table, and unscrewed the lid of the bottle, splashing an inch into each glass.

"Start at the beginning, son," he advised Sam, pushing a glass toward him. "Information in pieces is no help to anyone."

Sam picked up the glass and sipped at the contents, his gaze shifting between the glass and the ex-priest, carefully not meeting his brother's.

Hunched over the table and staring at his glass, Dean listened to the disjointed and broken tale as Sam skipped over parts of their history and focussed on what had happened twenty-four years ago, then what had happened in the last year. He couldn't look at the reactions of the people listening to it. He felt as if he was sitting there without his skin on. A freak. His family singled out for an attack that had seemed then and still seemed mindless and without reason.

"Where's the gun?" John asked when Sam stopped talking.

Dean glanced up at him, one brow rising slightly at the pragmatism of the exorcist. It was the same question he'd have asked, in the same position.

"We've got it," he said. "Just no more ammo."

"Bullets we can make," John said, looking over at him with a wry expression.

"Did the demon tell you why it wanted the Gate opened?" Rookwood asked, his gaze moving from Sam to Dean.

"No, but that – that's what they want, isn't it?" Dean felt disoriented by the idea that Yellow-Eyes had wanted anything other than the usual chaos. "Get out of Hell?"

"Yes and no," John said, leaning back in the chair as he seemed to consider it. "That demon went to a lot of trouble, creating its special kids, getting them all together to fight it out to the death, looking for the strongest, or the most easily manipulated, to do that one job – take the gun and use it to open the most strongly protected Gate in this country."

He leaned forward again, elbows on the table and looked at Sam. "If you'd killed Jake, you couldn't have opened the railway lines. And it's even questionable that you would've succumbed to whatever pressure the demon put on this other guy, right?"

Dean saw his brother sit back, taking that in. Neither of them had really thought through the demon's actions before.

"It lucked out because it got the one kid who could bend the rails and break the trap," John continued to muse. "The one kid who had something to lose that he couldn't bear to give up." His attention sharpened on Sam. "I get the feeling that it wouldn't have had the same success with you."

Rookwood was watching his brother too, Dean realised, the old man's eyes scouring Sam's expression.

"What's your point?" he asked Constantine.

"The point is that there was a plan," John told him. "And they don't. Plan, I mean."

"So we got one forward-thinking sonofabitch who's now dead," Dean said belligerently. "So what?"

"So what was the plan?" Angela said softly, looking at Rookwood. "If it's all over, why are the demons who got out killing priests and dropping churches in this city?"

Dean turned to look at him too. "The padre over there said that he thought the demons are looking for a Seal to Lucifer's cage," he said. "I'm guessing that's not a metaphor."

"No." Rookwood sighed, swallowing a mouthful of whiskey and looking at the glass. "No, the devil is real. As real as you and I. And yes, imprisoned in the lowest of the nine levels that make up Hell. And his prison is locked with sixty-six Seals."

"Sixty-six," Dean repeated, glancing at Sam. "That doesn't seem too urgent."

"Oh, they can't break him out," Rookwood told him with a careless shrug. "None of the Seals can be broken until the first, anyway."

"Then why are they looking for someone who can lead them to a Seal, if it's not the first and there are sixty-five that have to broken after that?" Sam asked, his brow furrowing up.

"There are sixty-six Seals out of a possible six hundred and sixty-six that will allow the devil out," Rookwood told him, scratching fingers through his long beard absently as he spoke. "But of those sixty-six, there are four that would allow him to speak to mankind, directly, without needing the demons to provide an… interface, let's call it."

"What d'you mean – directly?" Dean asked.

"To breathe his poisons into the ear of a man who is on the verge of killing, and drive him to kill," the heretic elaborated. "To tell a woman who is at the end of her strength, with two jobs and a child she loves but who is ill and fretful, to kill the child and get back her life. That kind of speaking. Putting temptation to the masses is easier in this time than it has ever been before," he continued, his eyes hooded. "Imagine what one of these television preachers could incite their nationwide flocks without ever leaving the studio, if the voice of the Devil orated through them?"

"Even if he got to someone like that," Sam argued. "That's just talk."

John looked at him, one brow lifted mockingly. "Hitler just talked, you know," he pointed out. "Just told the people that they'd been hard-done by, the reparations were too unfair. Advertising's just talk. Still sends millions into stores every day to buy things they didn't know they needed until someone told them."

"And look at what happened when our government decided they need to incite fear of the communist threat in the public," Angela added, her face screwing up. "He doesn't need to convince anyone, just scare them."

Dean pushed his glass away impatiently. "Alright, so he can talk to the population and probably tip over the percentage who are already on the edge – what's the payoff?"

"The number of souls," Father Tindell said quietly, walking to the table. "They have always powered Heaven and Hell. If Lucifer can escape from his cage, with enough souls in Hell, he will bring suffering to our plane in such quantity it will make all that mankind has ever suffered before seem like a headache."

"Revelations…" Sam said slowly, looking from the priest to the exorcist. "Are you talking about Armageddon?"

"There's a lot of Christian myth, before the Bible, before the Old Testament and the Qu'ran even," Rookwood said, waving a hand in the direction of the books packed into the shelves. "If Lucifer were allowed to rise, he could loose plague and famine and death over the world and the archangel Michael would bring the Host of Heaven to cast him back."

"Angels now, too?" Dean asked derisively. "C'mon."

"You fought demons, you saw into the pit through an open Gate," John said, his tone sardonic. "But angels are out of your belief zone?"

"I've _seen_ demons," Dean retorted.

"Hopefully you'll never see an angel, but they exist, nonetheless," Rookwood told him sharply. "And if the Seal the demons are seeking can let Lucifer speak through a mouthpiece, here, gather more souls for the pit, then you will see them in numbers that you wish you hadn't."

"The girl," Sam said, looking toward the sleeping area. "Can she lead them to this Seal?"

"Yes," Father Tindell said heavily. "I'm afraid she can."

**Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ-SPN-Ψ**

Dean sat on the edge of the platform, legs hanging over and his eyes half-closed as he thought of the conversation. Angels. The Devil. Seals to a cage in the lowest level of Hell. It was… too big. They were all just men.

He looked around as Angela walked up behind him, finding a small clear space and sitting down, letting her jean-clad legs dangle over the edge.

"You're a cop, you buying all this?" he asked her curiously as she wriggled backwards to get comfortable.

He was surprised to see her laugh softly. "What?"

"Two years ago, my sister committed suicide to stop an archangel from using her to bring the son of Satan through to this world," she said, very bluntly, turning her head to look at him.

He blinked at her. Two years ago, he'd been hunting in New Orleans, on his own, with no idea that his entire world was going to go belly-up.

She smiled at his expression. "Isabelle was my twin, and I – I let her down," she added slowly, turning to look at the still and silent machinery that filled the workshop in front of them. "We were both psychic, but she never hid it – and I did." She shook her head. "It's a long story. Gabriel used me instead of her and John saved me, saved the whole world when Mammon tried to come through."

He watched the expressions cross her face, pain and shame and guilt and a fleeting disbelief.

"He did it by tricking the devil," she continued after a moment, turning back to look at him. "And by sacrificing himself. So, yeah, I buy it."

Dean jerked his head back toward the living area. "And that girl – you know about that stuff? Stigmata and being a conduit or whatever they call it?"

"I'm a Catholic, so yes, the phenomenon of stigmata is familiar, although Father Tindell says she's not devout, which isn't in the Church's dogma. But John says that a conduit is someone who's open to everyone and everything. Most are insane before they reach their late teens."

"She could be," Dean said sourly. "All we heard was her spouting Revelations."

Angela shrugged. "Tindell says she not."

"Why're you even here? Getting involved with this?"

"I have a responsibility," she said, looking at him in surprise. "Both from the view of my job and what I can do. I got the feeling you felt a similar way."

"We didn't open the Gate, but we could have stopped it," he said, uncomfortably. "Could've sacrificed our friends and taken Jake down before he got to it."

She studied him for a moment, increasing his discomfort. "You might've been able to sacrifice yourself," she said quietly. "But someone else? I doubt it."

"Yeah," he admitted. "But that's the problem. It's a lot worse now."

"Maybe that's not the point," she told him. "Maybe the point is to do it the right way, no matter what."

"Dean?"

He turned at his brother's voice, rolling from hip to a knee and getting up.

"She's waking up," Sam said, looking at where John and Father Tindell were standing close by the bed.

"Maybe we'll get some answers now," Dean muttered as he stretched out a hand and helped Angela to her feet.

"More questions is more likely," she said, following him through the obstacle course of books and tables and chairs across the room.

Beyond his brother and the exorcist, he could see that the girl was sitting up. Her hands and feet were wrapped in bandages, he could see a faint spot of red seeping through the one around her left wrist, and she lifted her hand to her head, pressing the heel hard against her temple.

"Hallie, it's Father Tindell," the priest leaned forward, taking her hand. "What do you remember?"

"Not much," she said, lifting her head and dragging in a deep breath. "Got any painkillers?"

Not so much the ethereal, nut job he'd been expecting, Dean thought, walking beside Sam to stand a few feet from the bed. He hadn't gotten a good look at her before, just the chaotic impressions of her varying degrees of possession. She was skinny, bones jutting out at shoulder and elbow and knees. Her skin was very fair and quite a bit was covered in bruises, the usual end result for a body that had been possessed. Demons didn't take much care with their meatsuits. A tangle of dark brown hair hung in rat's tails and long twisting curls over her shoulders and down her back, stiff and dull with sweat and dust. She turned her head toward him and he saw a pair of bright blue eyes, outlined by thick, dark lashes. Smeared eye makeup gave them a clownish appearance, but the mind that looked out through them was completely sane, he thought, feeling a shiver go down his spine as he considered what she'd been through in the last few hours. Strike that, he corrected himself harshly. The whole of her life.

"Where the hell am I?"

"You're safe, for the moment," Father Tindell said reassuringly, although Dean thought he was stretching the truth with the statement. The priest looked around. "This is John Constantine, and those two gentlemen are Sam and Dean Winchester," he said. "Angela Dodson is a detective, and that's Thomas Rookwood. These people are here to help you."

She snorted, eyes squeezing shut with the unconsidered response. "C'mon, Father, no one can do that. What happened in the church?"

"They came," he said, his voice dropping. "They were repelled but we had to run."

Opening her eyes, Dean was struck by her expression, a tired and resigned look that seemed to age her by a decade or more. He realised he couldn't have picked her age anyway, the smooth skin was contradicted by her expressions, by the knowledge he could feel in her. Hunters were never young either, he thought.

"That's not gonna change, you know that, right? They'll sniff me out here as well."

Looking around at them, she said, "You should all just get as far away from me as you can."

"Can't do that," John told her, with a slight shrug. "We can't let them take you either."

She looked at him, her gaze dropping to his coat. "Then finish it."

There was a heartbeat of silence in the cavernous space, and Dean felt his body react to the shock with an icy chill. The words, so matter-of-factly delivered, had been considered by everyone there, he was sure of that. None of them had talked about it, but that didn't mean they hadn't all thought of it as a possible solution.

"That won't be necessary, my dear," Rookwood said dryly. "Not even as a last resort."

Beside him, Dean felt his brother unclench slightly, heard his breathing ease.

"You think this is such a great life, mister, that I'd be fighting to hang onto it?" she asked Rookwood, tilting her head to the side.

"No," Thomas said gently. "But it is still not a solution."

She opened her mouth as if she were going to argue the matter further, then abruptly closed it again. "Well, I could use some food. And something to dial down the nervous system. And I need to use the bathroom."

Father Tindell nodded and turned away, followed by Rookwood. John turned to Angela with a lifted brow and she nodded, moving up to the bed.

"Not sure if you caught it but my name's Angela," she said to Hallie. "I'll help you to the bathroom."

The girl slid her legs awkwardly out of the bed and put her feet on the floor, testing her strength before she committed to standing. Dean watched her wobble as she stood, checking the automatic impulse to help and remaining where he was.

"I can probably manage, if you can point it out," Hallie said, taking a step a bit more confidently as her body came back under her control.

"Down there," Angela pointed to the other track. "Let me help with the stairs, at least, alright?"

"Stairs, great, could probably use some help there."

The three men watched them walk slowly along the edge of the platform, and John turned to look at Dean.

"Not what you expected."

Dean's mouth curled up to one side. "No."

"Can we protect her?" Sam asked, his gaze following Angela and Hallie down the stairs.

"We can protect the Seal," John said, looking past Sam to the priest and heretic who were preparing food in the kitchen. "Once that's done, she won't be hunted."

"Or we could send every demon that got through the Gate back to Hell," Dean offered casually.

"I don't think we've got that sort of time," John said mildly. "But we'll work on both options." He looked back at them. "I met your father briefly, in '97. Heard he died. He seemed like a good man."

Dean's gaze dropped to the floor. "Yeah, he was."

"He didn't tell you about any of this."

It wasn't a question and Dean flicked a look at his brother. "No, he was hunting the Yellow-Eyed demon, the, uh, fallen. But he didn't talk about Gates, or the devil –"

"No, he didn't tell us about this," Sam cut him off brusquely. "Our father operated on a need-to-know basis."

The implication, underlined by the anger in Sam's voice, was clear and Dean's expression tightened, angry with the indiscretion in front of a stranger, and with his brother's assumption that their father had been trying to control them, had been lying deliberately to them.

"They…" Dean said, looking over his shoulder at the kitchen table where Rookwood and Tindell were setting out places. "… keep calling you 'the exorcist', that what you do?"

John smiled. "I do a lot of things. That's a part of it," he said easily. "There was supposed to be a balance, on this plane, on earth, between light and dark, good and evil. Every now and then, that would be infringed and the half-breeds –" he paused, looking at their blank expressions. "You don't know about the half-breeds?"

"Uh, no, not really," Sam said, a little awkwardly, looking at his brother.

"Hmmm, that's a long story," John murmured, shaking his head. "I'll fill you in later, but if someone crossed the line, I deported their sorry asses back to Hell."

"By exorcising them," Dean said.

"Yeah."

"So, you're a demon hunter?"

"Like I said, I do a lot of things," John prevaricated, hearing the bathroom door clang open below them. "We'll fill in the blanks after we've figured out what we were going to do with the girl."

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"So, the priests who were killed, they all had some kind of experience with the other side?" Sam asked, pushing his plate back and finishing his coffee.

"Yeah," John glanced at Father Tindell. "Some kind."

The priest nodded, his hands clasped together on the table in front in him. "We are – were – the watchers in the city," he admitted reluctantly. "Mostly, you understand, nothing happens, we're not needed. But –"

"But something like this comes along and you're the front line?" Dean guessed, wiping the last of the runny egg from his plate with a piece of toast and throwing a glance at Rookwood. "You a part of that too?"

"No," Thomas said. "I've been out of that game for a long time."

"But you know it, right?" Dean pressed him. "Know how this works?"

"I was excommunicated for my studies into the life of Jesus Christ," Rookwood told him blandly.

Dean caught the slightly startled lift of Father Tindell's gaze. "Sure you were. Head occult investigator, right?"

"What I did isn't important, not now," Thomas said with a heavy shrug. "What I know, that's of more value. If we get the girl out of the city, at least the demons will leave it as well."

"That would suit me," Angela remarked to her coffee cup.

"You got a better place to go, far, far away?" John asked, his tone dry.

"Yes, but it won't help us find the Seal."

"If the Seal's hidden, and we got a place to take the only person who can find it …" Dean trailed off.

"Or," Thomas said, looking at Hallie. "If we moved out into the open, and the demons came directly for us, we could get the information we need from them, such as who is looking for the Seal."

Dean looked at the girl. She'd put away three eggs, a mound of bacon, four sausages, a mess of broiled tomatoes and several slices of toast, not looking up or joining the conversation. She looked at the heretic now, the expression in her eyes shrewdly calculating. He revised his opinion of her again.

"Midnite said that between three and six hundred demons escaped Hell when the Gate was opened," John said.

"Midnite?" Sam asked, looking from Rookwood back to John. "Who's Midnite?"

"A person with… contacts," John said. "Another long story."

"Every half-breed in the city left, when the Gate opened," Thomas told him, his voice sceptical. "Even Papa Midnite doesn't get his information from thin air."

"Someone stayed, long enough," John countered. "He said more demons have been coming here, every day."

"If we run, we lose our chance to get ahead of the plan," Rookwood said, his gaze moving to the girl again. "They will not stop."

Watching the two men, Dean had the distinct impression of the opening gambits of a fight. They were testing each other, he thought, looking for strengths and weaknesses, but not just in each other, in their thought processes as well.

"Do you have a location in mind?" John asked after a moment's silent thought.

"I was thinking of the Bowl," Thomas said, the corner of his mouth lifting. "There are a lot of advantages and it's empty for the next month."

Dean leaned forward, elbows on the table. "What advantages?"

"The Bowl's stage, and the hillside it was built into, is almost spherical," Rookwood said, looking at him and back to John. "The trap and the protection can be three-dimensional, much more effective that any kind that must be laid out on a floor."

"It's too big," Angela protested. "The amphitheatre seats nearly eighteen thousand –"

"We only need the stage and the first section of seating," Thomas told her, his gaze remaining on John's face. "It's away from the city. And any… light show that occurs there will be thought of as something planned."

Dean thought of the little he knew of the 1920's concert shell and its surroundings. There wasn't much. If it was out of the city centre, and if they could run iron and salt around the shell… he exhaled and looked at his brother. Sam's brow was wrinkled up in his characteristic expression of fast, mental calculation.

"And you want to bait this trap with Hallie?" Sam said, his tone clipped, his feelings on the matter plain.

Both Thomas and John turned to look at him, but it was the girl who answered.

"Beats sitting around in this dump for the rest of my life."

Repressing his smile, Dean watched his brother double-take.

"If the trap fails, if _we_ fail, they'll take you and find the Seal anyway," Sam grated at her, obviously annoyed that his attempt to keep her out of the firing line had been circumvented.

"The trap won't fail –" Thomas started to say.

"We can keep her safe – as safe as here, anyway –" John said over the top of the ex-priest.

"We can't just wait here forever –" Angela added over the top of John.

Dean shook his head, looking at Hallie. "You alright with this?" he asked, raising his voice to shut them all up.

"I've got limited options," she told him, her voice edged. "I'd rather get it over with."

He nodded, throwing a quelling look at Sam who opened his mouth to argue. "Not our decision to make," he said to his brother shortly, then turned to Rookwood. "What do we need?"

Thomas smiled and got up from the table. "Let me show you the armoury."

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End file.
